DAMAGE CORRELATIONS IN SEMICONDUCTORS EXPOSED TO GAMMA-RADIATION, ELECTRON-RADIATION AND PROTON-RADIATION

The use of nonionizing energy loss (NIEL) in predicting the effect of gamma, electron and proton irradiations on Si, GaAs and InP devices is discussed. The NIEL for electrons and protons has been calculated from the displacement threshold to 200 MeV. Convoluting the electron NIEL with the ''slowed down'' Compton secondary electron spectrum gives an effective NIEL for Co-60 gammas, enabling gamma-induced displacement damage to be correlated with particle results. The fluences of 1 MeV electrons equivalent to irradiation with 1 Mrad(Si) for Si, GaAs and InP are given. Analytic proton NIEL calculations and results derived from the Monte Carlo code TRIM agree exactly so long as straggling is not significant. The NIEL calculations are compared with experimental proton and electron damage coefficients using solar cells as examples. A linear relationship is found between the NIEL and proton damage coefficients for Si, GaAs and InP devices. For electrons, there appears to be a linear dependence for n-Si and n-GaAs, but for p-Si there is a quadratic relationship which decreases the damage coefficient at 1 MeV by a factor of similar to 10 below the value for n-Si. The present results greatly extend the range of environments for which damage calculations based on NIEL can be applied. The NIEL results are presented in tabular form for ease of calculation.